Wartime Kill Decisions: Human or AI?

Open to Debate

Society & Culture, Education, News

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even with a fragile ceasefire in place between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, we wanted to revisit this prescient debate from last fall. In the past few weeks of war, autonomous systems, AI-driven targeting, and drones were heavily used by both sides leading some to fear we’re rapidly approaching a future of warfare that takes human decision making out of the loop entirely. Are we ready for that? This ethical conundrum is at the crux of this week's debate, originally broadcast in October 2025. Arguing "Human": Elliot Ackerman, Former Marine Raider Officer and CIA Special Activities Officer; Bestselling Author Laura Walker McDonald, Senior Advisor for New Technologies & Conflict at the International Committee of the Red Cross Arguing "AI": Michael C. Horowitz, Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations; Director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Jack Shanahan, Inaugural Director of Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Office of the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates Join the conversation on Substack—share your perspective on this episode and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for curated insights from our debaters, moderators, and staff. Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and TikTok to stay connected with our mission and ongoing debates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:31.3	This is open to debate. I'm John Donvan, and once again, war with Iran is in the news after the U.S. and Israel launched their joint
0:39.2	attack back in February. This is an evolving situation, but as of this recording, both sides are
0:44.6	digging in, and there is one factor that makes this conflict different from those that came before,
0:49.4	and that is artificial intelligence, AI warfare, autonomous weapons. Some people are even calling this the first
0:55.9	AI war. Something else has been simmering. Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude,
1:02.8	is now in a high-profile legal dispute with the Department of War after the company wanted to
1:08.1	limit how the government could use its technology on the battlefield.
1:11.8	So while we're not yet living in the world of the Terminator, AI weapons are no longer a hypothetical.
1:17.7	They're a real wartime strategy. And so we thought it was time for another look at this question.
1:23.3	Wartime Kill Switch, human or AI. We hold this debate a few months ago at the New York
1:28.7	headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations, and out of it came a fascinating conversation
1:33.3	about whether and how this technology can be used responsibly. Let's get to it.
1:38.8	Welcome to another of our episodes in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations.
1:42.5	We have four superbly qualified
1:44.3	debaters who will be arguing two against two. One team arguing that it is essential to keep
1:48.9	humans in the loop, the other willing to put AI at the helm. So we're going to get to our
1:54.0	opening statements. And first up, here to convince us that we should keep humans in the loop.
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